[lbo-talk] "A tea party with brains"

Marv Gandall marvgand at gmail.com
Tue Oct 4 08:33:59 PDT 2011


On 2011-10-04, at 10:55 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Oct 4, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
>> Occupy Wall Street is a tea party with brains
>
> While waiting for my car to get fixed this morning, I had breakfast at a restaurant in the so-hip Meatpacking District in Manhattan. Nearby, two hipster business guys, amidst talk of pageviews and typical stuff like that, started talking about OWS. I couldn't hear what they said about it, but I was struck that they were talking about it at all.

It seems to me the liberal wing of the ruling class (or whatever term others prefer), ie. those who want to see more controls on the banks and higher taxes alongside spending cuts to curb the deficit, would welcome pressure from below which serves as a counterweight to industry and conservative resistance to even the most modest reform of the system. This was characteristic of the 30's depression.

Also, much street protest over the past three decades has been in solidarity with foreign struggles abroad. This one is clearly aimed at the structure of American power and property at home, which is why, I expect, it has begun to attract more attention than its limited numbers and social composition would suggest, including by bread-and-butter trade unionists and others affected by the crisis who can identify with its aims, however loosely formulated.



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